Moving your Blog to WordPress

Choosing a blogging platform is something each blogger goes through- and often reassesses as they continue their blogging career. While making the decision between Blogger and WordPress can be a difficult one for some, the benefits typically far outweigh the cons. As we discussed in our platform article, self-hosted WordPress may not be for everyone. In addition, if you are not ready to make the commitment to monthly hosting fees and want to stay on a free platform, Blogger (blogspot) is superior to wordpress.com. But, there are benefits that cannot be matched when putting your blog on self-hosted WordPress.

WordPress Questions Explained

Ownership of content

Everyone has different reasons they think are more significant than others. For me, the most important reason to be on self-hosted WordPress is rather simple: ownership of content. This is particularly true if you operate your blog as a business or a part of your business. To not be on self-hosted WordPress is to give up an element of control over what you work so hard to build up. You can (and should) back up your content regularly to help mitigate any loss, but at the end of the day with a blogspot blog, Google owns it- not you. If you are pursuing this as a business in particular, why let someone else own your hard work?

SEO Value

There are fantastic themes and plugins available on WordPress. While Blogger has some options, they just do not compare to what’s avialable on WordPress. WordPress is not just a blogging platform, it’s a full content management system- meaning you can not only create a blog, but so much more. In addition, WordPress has many themes and plugins that optimize the search engine settings for each of your posts and pages. Where SEO is an important currency in blogging, this is crucial.

Will I lose anything?

Moving involves many steps. You need to purchase a domain name and hosting package, install WordPress, and set up your new environment- just to get started! If done properly, the switch to WordPress can occur with out losing your content, readers, subscribers- even your design, if you don’t want to make any changes. An important note: You never delete your blogspot blog. Never ever ever. There are steps to take to ensure it is done properly, so be sure to get references before choosing someone to transfer your blog.

How much does it cost?

If you prefer to have someone move your installation for you, costs will vary. You can expect to pay, on average $100-$150 for a transfer (this is an average- prices can be much, much higher), which does not necessarily include the price of design, hosting, or your domain. A domain name typically costs about $10 a year, with hosting packages varying from $5-$15 a month for the average blogger.

Can I do it myself?

This really depends on many things. If you are comfortable with some coding and the technical side of things, it is certainly possible to do it yourself; many, many bloggers have. However, to ensure the best experience, it is usually better to hire someone to do it for you. An experienced professional can save you hours (if not weeks) of work, and will ensure you do not lose anything in the process.

About Ashley Abele

Ashley is a mom of 3 young children, social media consultant and blogger. She focuses on strategizing for bloggers and small businesses to help them reach their online potential and subsequent sales potential as cofounder of Other Half Media. When she’s not busy creating blogger outreach programs, email or social media campaigns, she blogs her life, parenting, and frequent moves at My Front Porch Swing. Connect on @AshleyNAbele on Twitter and on Facebook.

About Ashley Abele

Ashley is a mom of 3 young children, social media consultant and blogger. She focuses on strategizing for bloggers and small businesses to help them reach their online potential and subsequent sales potential as cofounder of Other Half Media. When she’s not busy creating blogger outreach programs, email or social media campaigns, she blogs her life, parenting, and frequent moves at My Front Porch Swing. Connect on @AshleyNAbele on Twitter and on Facebook.

There’s something strange going on with the links to “How to Rock Your Blog”. Just wanted you to know because I’m interested in taking your course. Can’t get to your site. *Looks sad, shrugs her shoulders*

I am now in a crossroad to switch from blogger to wordpress (self-hosting). Read from my blogger setting that they provide feature to link my blogger to the new address. Need help whether my understanding is correct: by activate that feature than my old blog (in blogger) will connect to the new one. If it is then should I still need to transfer all of the contents?

I too have been contemplating about moving from Blogger to WP for some time. Thank you for this great article, which confirms that I really should make the switch. I like others said above as well am looking for assistance with the move and would appreciate any recommendations. Thank you so much!

Thank you for this post! The info was very much needed and was helpful. I’ve been thinking about making the switch to wordpress lately and had no clue how or why exactly haha besides people saying it was better….thanks again!

I have been thinking about the move for months and even bought a domain name and got a hosting package. What is stopping me is the worry of losing all the comments on my Blogger blog,where I have installed Intensedebate. Anyone have any solution to this?

Great article! As so many others have mentioned, I’ve been contemplating making the switch for awhile too. I’m so clueless about the technical aspect of blogging that the thought of this scares me to pieces! I need to find someone who can do it for me but also help me learn more about the technical side of things (i.e. I need someone to hold my hand throughout the entire process and explain things to me in very simple terms, LOL). It would be great if we could have a list of reputable people who do this sort of thing…does anyone know of such a resource? Thanks!

I just setup my new WP blog on my own domain name a couple weeks ago, still moving the posts over and lost the few subscribers I had (mostly friends and family) and posted a “my blog is moving” post on my blogger blog. I do like the design of the WP better and the neat plug ins. I hope to figure out though privacy for readers so I can setup a link share account. It’s all very confusing to me, but I rely on Sits girls posts to help me out! :). I need to become a sits girl myself as much as I post on this and Mel’s momcomm site! I am not regretting the move so far, slowly but surely building my audience back up! Thanks for all the helpful advice! Keep it coming, I’m still a newbie!

I tried Blogger some years ago but didn’t stick with it for long… I was frustrated about not being able to control layout and spacing very well, and felt like it limited the appearance of my blog. I started my current blog on WP.com and love it. This week I am in the process of moving to self-hosted WP.org… I’m looking forward to owning my content.

I just made the move to self hosted WP a couple months ago… During the move, somehow my feed subscribers got lost. 🙁 Just want to add make sure you’re careful with your feed! That way you won’t lose anyone!!!

Great tips! I made the switch from blogger to WordPress almost a year ago and don’t regret it. I did the switch myself and it took quite awhile to figure out some of the roadblocks. Once I did it I was super proud of myself. Then I tried to figure out my own template. When I was getting anywhere I finally hired a designer. Since then I have made some minor tweaking to it myself. I love that I’m learning along the way.

I’m still on the fence. I feel like it took hours to get my blogger set up. After that I’ve been tweaking it over many months to get it how I like it. IS it really worth it to transfer over plus pay money? I feel like it’s the difference between chocolate and vanilla.

I don’t know if this is the case here, but I have read so many articles like this where it’s apparent the writer is not up to date with Blogger’s features and policies. I own my own domain on Blogger, and the content is most certainly mine. Plug-ins, SEO, and other features that are so valued on WordPress are either available now or are coming. And I’ve blogged for businesses with WordPress blogs and have found them to be far less user friendly than Blogger blogs. Sorry, my SITS girls friends; I’ll tell anyone who asks that a self-hosted domain through Blogger is a thousand times easier and every bit as gadget-intensive as WordPress. (But I am enjoying these articles!)

DeNae, I am most certainly up to date on Blogger’s terms, maintain accounts on Blogger and even work with those who choose to stay on Blogger to customize it and code it. The content is certainly yours; the difference is that Google can decide to take a blog down if they so decide. They OWN your space. At any conference, you will find at least one person in the room who this has happened to or to whom someone they know. As someone who has (and still does) work both on the blogger and business side, I assure you that the SEO of a WordPress blog far outweighs that of a Blogger one in most situations. While Blogger is certainly very user-friendly, it is not possible to have a “self-hosted domain” on it and it is not the best route for those looking to take it beyond a hobby.

There is nothing that I can find in the terms and conditions to support this.

True, Blogger may choose to remve a blog if it does not follow content policies -this rarely happens to law-abiding citizens. Blogs are removed for the promotion of Hate crimes, copyright infringement, publishing other people’s confidential information, making money from pornograpgy etc. You can read Blogger’s Content policy here.

When selecting a blogging platform, I went with statistics, and examined which platforms large successful companies use. Blogger wins out every time.

I have assisted many businesses who have so-called ‘self-hosted’ WordPress sites. These are not ‘self-hosted’ you are paying for the privelege to forward your blog to a host. Blogger allows you to do this for FREE.

While I do work for companies who have WordPress sites, Blogger wins hands-down when it comes to ease of use, and versatility in creating themes – total control and limitless.

In addition, people who have ‘self-hosted’ Word Press do NOT have total access to their entire html. Sometimes, when sites are hacked, I can see the problem, but cannot gain access to help the person at all, and the business must wait for WordPress to get around to them. WordPress is notorious for being hacked.

Blogger has tons of FREE plugins -they are called widgets. However, WordPress requires more plugins to have the same builtin functionality as a Blogger.

Re SEO
This depends on your content and niche – run mostly pictures? You need to insert alt tags title tags and descriptions -otherwise your site is just a big emoty space – something many WordPress Themes encourage.
I have niche sites that rank top just using the FREE blogspot. ie Local small town news sites.

I would recommend WordPress over Blogger IF you like to pay money for things you can get for free.

SEO – has a great deal to do with content.
The much touted ‘built in SEO of WordPress s simply the ability to insert your GOOGLE analytics code and other metatags through a plugin.
Blogger has this option as well – in the advanced settings under CSS .
WordPress just markets it better.

Blogger ownership is often verfied automatically, as I have found under Google website developer tools.

I made the leap to domain ownership last year and got hosting this year. I made the move to WP with much trepidation. I had attempted it early on in my blogging and was so confused. Now I am able to handle a lot of things that I couldn’t have before.

Thanks so much! 🙂 I can’t wait to improve my skills. I was just hired as a web/graphic designer for Bellaboo, http://www.bellaboobabe.com, too! All these awesome ladies are letting me live my dreams through their websites. 🙂

I’ve debated this too, for almost 2 years, and still haven’t made any attempt to move forward. Thanks for the tips and push in the right direction. I just know it’s going to be a headache doing this myself, but that’s my only option for now.

I made the migration to WordPress last year with the help of Sharon’s book, and I’m so glad I spent the money. Well worth it, as she provides a step-by-step process.

Currently, I am in the middle of moving one of my sites from one host to another, and I discovered that my new host, Hostgator, provides free content migration, which I am definitely taking advantage of. The free migration comes included with most of their packages and also includes moving content from Blogger over to your new domain. For those who are stressing about making this move yourself, every little bit helps, and so a free content migration is one less thing that you yourself have to do.

There are still some other changes that you’d have to make yourself, but with Sharon’s book, you can definitely get the job done.

Great post Ashley! I’ve found that many Bloggers blog owners’ are concerned about losing their GFC followers and Blogger follows when moving from Blogger to WordPress. I suggest keeping your Blogger blog and syndicating excerpts to it to keep those readers in the loop and not lose them. Some find this a time suck. Would love to hear your suggestions.